Dave-H

I've just noticed a strange effect when running Opera 11.54 on 98SE with KernelEx. I found it when visiting Nokia's site. This is how one of the pages looks in XP - And this is how it looks in 98SE! - I thought the headings were in Greek at first glance, but in places it looks as if it's trying to display English text using the Greek alphabet! Is this a known problem?

Glad you sorted out the folder naming problem! Just one suggestion ProblemChyld. Are you declaring this to be a final release of SP3? If so, it should be called 3.0 and should not then be subsequently altered. Any subsequent fixes or additions should be SP3.1, 3.2 etc. The title of this thread should be changed to "98 SE SP 3" too, or a new thread started. Drop the "beta" if it no longer is a beta.

Thanks Problemchyld for doing this. The project had been apparently abandoned for far too long. I do hope Gape's OK. Thanks for picking it up and running with it. I installed the last final version SP2.1a years ago, and have added a lot of other unofficial patches since then manually, including using the last version of Soporific's Autopatcher. I don't think my system is now missing anything of importance so I probably won't install this SP version, but it's downloaded and waiting should I ever need to reinstall things! Thanks again. Dave.

That will be the last full version of Autopatcher, from December 2007. It should be a 286 MB file. However there was a 45 MB update version subsequently released in December 2008, which was the last issued. You need the full version installed before you can apply the update version.

Just one suggestion, looking at that reg file. My Windows 98SE installation is not in the default C:\Windows location, it is in C:\WIN-98 on my system. For the service pack to take customised installations into account, would it not be better to use environment variables, e.g. in this case %windir%\command\cmd.exe?

Thanks. That's very interesting. I probably will keep the version I have already as I've never run into the problem that the patch addresses.

Yes, that may be the way to go. Have you tried running your existing Opera and selecting "check for updates" under the help menu? That did seem to work for me when the standalone installer failed. You will then have to apply KernelEx Windows 2000 SP4 compatibility mode to the opera.exe file.

I think you have to set the KernelEx mode on the Opera installer to Windows 2000 SP4, not XP. IIRC I did try other modes myself, and they didn't work.

As a longtime Opera fan, I want to always use the latest versions and keep them working on the Windows 98 side of my machine, and I'm using 11.51 with KernelEx with no problems apart from a few minor cosmetic ones. All functionality is fine and it's very fast indeed.

Mines is the rloew patched version. Ah, thanks. What was the patch for? Would there be any advantage to me using that version instead of the one I have?

Can't help with creating an installer I'm afraid, but just thought I'd mention that my version of KERNEL32.DLL is 4.10.0.2226, which looks later than the one quoted.

That's exactly what soporific's Autopatcher was. Unfortunately it hasn't been updated for several years now.

Of course not, although Microsoft do seem to be now doing their best to finally sweep it under the carpet. There's still a huge amount of information on the MS site relating to Windows 98 though, even though the Windows Update service for it has been withdrawn. Like any OS, Windows 98 will only truly die when there is no computer left in the world running it, and that's a very long way away yet!

Thanks, that works! I can now open the iuhist file in IE, but I need to find a (preferably free) program that will convert it to an html file that's more readable. I've found a couple but they aren't free and the demo versions won't convert the whole file. I don't really want to buy the program just to use it once only! I really wish I'd saved the whole Windows Update 4 site, but of course I didn't know that it was going to be shut down without warning!

Well I got another response from MS Support. "Dear Dave, Thank you for your reply. I am sorry to inform you that Windows Update 4 including security updates for Windows® 98 has been withdrawn. Please visit the following website for more information: http://support.microsoft.com/ph/1139 If you have any more questions please contact our Customer Services team on 0844 800 2400. The lines are open from 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays or please reply to this email Many thanks for contacting us......." So that's it then, it's definitely been permanently withdrawn. I guess that we were lucky that it stayed on-line for a full five years after Windows 98/ME support ended! If anyone isn't aware, you can tidy things up by setting the "NoWindowsUpdate" setting at "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer" to "0". This will remove the Windows Update entry from Start Menu>Settings and from the IE Tools menu. One thing I would like to be able to still do is open my updates history file properly in IE6. If I try and open my "iuhist.xml" in IE6, it doesn't display, because it seems to need a file called "resultschema.xml", which is normally downloaded from the Windows Update site. Of course this no longer happens, and I don't have this file anywhere on my system. Does anyone still have a version of this file, (perhaps even still in your IE6 cache)? If so, if it's possible to let me have a copy I would be very grateful.

Indeed it does! If you're still using Opera, are you aware that you can re-enable javascript on a site by site basis? This would enable you to still use js on sites that are unusable without it.

Thanks.

This is off-topic, but just very quickly Rudolph, is this patch for Windows 9x only, or will it enable me to generate files over 4 GB on Windows XP with FAT32 drives?

I find it useful to be able to repair my XP installation using Windows 98 (and occasionally vice versa) mainly as it allows complete access to system files without constant file locking problems. And yes, there is a "fun factor" too! I still have my original 1993 PC, with Windows 95 and NT 3.51 on it dual boot. I play with it, but I wouldn't use it for anything serious!

For what it's worth, Windows 98SE is blisteringly fast and totally stable on my dual boot system. Web performance (using Opera 11.51 with KernelEx) is extremely fast, there is no difference in fact from surfing on Windows XP. I do have broadband of course, and a reasonably good graphics card (ATI Radeon X-850 AGP, which is probably the best I'll do on my present motherboard.) As far as I'm concerned Windows 98SE is far from dead, although one has to accept now that there is a lot of modern software which will just not run on it, so I would never say that anyone should use it exclusively. It's very useful as a second OS on a dual boot system however.

Well, I got a reply back from Windows Update support, but I'm afraid that as I expected it's a pretty stock one. "Dear Dave, Thank you for your email about issues accessing updates for Windows® 98. Please accept my apologies for the delay. I am sorry to inform you that the assisted support for Windows 98 has expired as the product is out of support lifecycle. Please refer to the following web link for information on support lifecycle; http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/ Alternatively, Please visit the following website to post your query and one of our Microsoft Valued Professionals will be able to help you with an answer. http://social.answers.microsoft.com Also, I would like to assure you that we do consider your feedback to be extremely valuable as it helps us to improve the products and service that we offer. With this in mind I will make sure that your feedback is passed to the appropriate department for their consideration. If you have any more questions please contact our Customer Services team on 0844 800 2400. The lines are open from 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays or please reply to this email Many thanks for contacting us Kind regards........" Anyway, I replied asking for a definite answer as to whether Windows Update v4 has now been permanently switched off or not. I'm not holding my breath for a response! I do wonder if it's significant that this seems to have happened exactly five years after support for Windows 98 ended. Maybe it was in the small print somewhere that updates would only be available via Windows Update for another five years.

That URL was one of the ones I tested too. Doesn't work on my system. The plugin window loads, with the right hand side cut off as you say, but after the plugin displays "connecting", "opening", and "ready" the video won't actually play. I also get no right click menu so I can't see what the error actually is. The URL opens fine using IE6 and directly in WMP9. P.S. As CharlesF rightly says, this is may well not actually be a KernelEx problem, so could be off topic for this thread. This has already happened once before with the thread starting to be full of "Opera under Windows 98/ME" problems, which are not necessarily KernelEx related.

Well I've raised a support request about this with MS Windows Update support. I'll see what they say (or if they even respond!)

Just tried it on my system (Opera 11.51), and the plugin loads OK, and the media player plugin window appears, but no videos I've tried will actually play. The error message if you right click on the player window is usually "network error". This happens even on URLs which will play OK in WMP9 itself. Try configuring Opera to open the video in the actual media player rather than using the plugin.

I sadly can also confirm that the old Windows Update v4 site is now just looping between two addresses and never loading. I thought it was just me, but obviously not! I feel that this must be a fault, as MS have always maintained that existing updates for Windows 98/ME would still remain available, and they do usually announce if that sort of thing has changed. Anyway, surely they would just redirect it to a page informing people that Windows Update was no longer available rather than just making it look as if it's a fault! It looks to me as if it's redirecting to the Windows Update v6 address, and then bouncing straight back again, so I suspect that the v4 site is still there, it's the detection system that detects that you have Windows 98 or ME that isn't working properly, and it's trying to send you to the v6 site in error. It's annoying because even though there was never anything new there when I looked of course, it did enable me to look at my update history, and I now see no way of doing that if the page won't load! Is it worth sending an e-mail to MS about this? Has anyone here already done so? EDIT I've just managed to get into the Windows Update site on Windows 98 using Opera, as you can tell Opera to mask itself as Internet Explorer. This time it didn't bounce back to another address, but what I'm seeing may actually be the v6 Windows Update site not the v4 one. As it relies on ActiveX controls, which Opera doesn't support, I can't go any further to check.